Sometimes you don’t want to make music that will take you to the top of the charts, you just want to relax and have fun working on something that sounds pleasing to your ears – even if no-one else will ever hear it. For these occasions, Auxy for the iPad is ideal, and it’s just received a significant update.

The new version of Auxy boasts a new look, new drum and synth sounds and the ability to save and open multiple projects.

The great thing about Auxy is that as long as you’re happy staying within the confines of electronic music, it’s hard to go wrong. The grid-based composition window keeps you in the right key, so you’re not going to end up with a tuneless mess, and the available synth and drum sounds really are very good indeed.

While Auxy is in some ways limiting – you get a drum track, a bass track, two synth tracks and that’s it – there are a few neat touches tucked away that will be appreciated by more experienced producers. Each track has an adjustable filter control, and the synths get a delay effect. There’s a really nice Swing function for giving your tracks a more natural feel, too.

Once you’ve built up a song, you can record it for posterity, after which it can be emailed, sent to another app using AudioCopy, or picked up from your iPad’s Apps folder in iTunes.

Recording itself is fun, too. You have to ‘perform’ the song, switching between different loops in real time, sometimes using several fingers at once as you trigger the exact combination of beats, bass and synths to keep your song progressing. Any effect adjustments you make are recorded too, so you can throw in a satisfying filter sweep as you head into a breakdown.

Part of me would love to see Auxy expand its functionality with a sample player and other more advanced features, but a lot of the charm here is in the simplicity. If you want something similar that offers a lot more control and variety, Korg’s Gadget app is the one for you.